Police in the southern Ba Ria Vung Tau Province arrested and asked prosecutors to indict Nguyen Thi Bich Phuong, the owner of three vessels found carrying tons of pillaged fiber-optic cable last month.

Phan Minh Tiep, a boatman under Phuong’s payroll, was also arrested. Phuong and Tiep could be charged with “destroying major public national security projects” and possibly face the death sentence.

The three ships’ captains have too been arrested and will face prosecution. Confessions obtained from the three have implicated Phuong as the ringleader of the thefts. The confessions also indicated they began stealing the cables in March this year.

In all, 43 km of cable have gone missing from two lines in Vietnamese waters this year.

Eleven kilometers of the TVH (Thailand-Vietnam-Hong Kong) line and 32 km of the APCN (Asia Pacific Cable Network), linking nine Asian countries, have been stolen.

The theft may be partly attributed to the Ba Ria Vung Tau government’s decree last year permitting soldiers and fishermen to haul up unused cables laid before 1975 to sell as scrap.

Amidst the scramble, several fishermen reportedly ‘mistook’ cables in use for unused ones, but Ministry of Post and Telematics officials said the acts were most likely thefts, not mistakes.

Source: Sai Gon Giai Phong - Translated by A.N.O.N